The man struggled to climb the wire fence back into the field. He wavered.
Benny called again. He was in the field and starting to run. Benny jerked backwards and the sound became bone breaking in his head. The man fell. There was silence for a split second then the voices inside cried out, What was that what the fuck was that? There’s someone shooting at us get down!
Benny stood back. The tarpaulin flapped and the sheet of tin rattled. Inside the house the lights were doused. There was no sound from the field where the man was. The northman came to the front of the house. The shotgun hung limp in Benny’s arm. His legs were about to buckle under him. The door opened.
“What was that? Who fired that shot? Where did it come from?” Benny gestured towards the field. They climbed the wire. It looked like a pile of old clothes lying in the ditch. The northman paled. He tilted Pat Lacey’s face upwards. It was covered in blood. “Jesus!” he said. “Jesus Christ!”
His voice quivered as he stood up. He turned to Benny and spat, “You bastard—you stupid bastard! Now you’ve gone and done it good and proper!”
He ran back inside. The Hamiltons were on their knees praying. The northmen lost their minds. They furiously erased all the fingerprints. They took the Hamiltons outside. They soaked the furniture in petrol. Benny, half-dazed, wiped fingerprints from the window. The northman pushed him out of the way and snapped bitterly, “You’ve done your fucking bit pal. Stay out of it . . .”
The Hamiltons stood in their nightclothes and watched the house go up in flames. A tarry smell began to fill the valley.
The northman pointed his pistol as them. “Walk. Get walking. And don’t stop. You’ve a lucky man tonight Hamilton. We know you have it somewhere—we’ll get you . . .”
The northman pulled off his mask and shouted. “It’s every man for himself now. Move! Separate for fuck’s sake!”
In a split second the farmyard had emptied and Benny Dolan flinging the shotgun from him, sickened, and unable to hold his thoughts together, stumbled forward into the darkness.
XXII
Josie clutched at the table to steady herself. She feared she was going to vomit again. A searing pain went through her head. The open door swung idly.
Across the valley the sky burned.
You better say your prayers now. Say your prayers to the Sacred Heart . . . Look there He is, looking down on you, a right-looking sketch you are with sick on your face, your hands shaking and your mind not your own. You made your bed and now you can lie in it.
“Pat—help me! Please Pat where are you?”
The door swung. The smoke rose up into the sky above the Hairy Mountains. What was it? What did it mean?
She stumbled as she went out across the field, calling his name over and over, answered only by her own voice.
XXIII
The shot rang out and rolled across the Hairy Mountains.
Don switched the radio off sharply. “What the hell was that?”
He opened the car door. He went across the field. Then he turned and beckoned to the Australian. “Come on—let’s see what’s going on.”
They got out of the car. Thick smoke was drifting above the valley.
“We better get the fuck out of here,” said Don, whitefaced.
Sadie went cold when she looked down into the valley. The Hamilton house was in flames. Two men in balaclava masks ran towards the woods. The smell of the fire was beginning to drift over the fields.
“Jesus,” said the Australian, as Don went back hastily to the car. He started the engine and called through the open window. “Come on.”
Una pulled Sadie’s arm and said, “Let’s get out quick Sadie . . .”
Sadie had turned to follow them when she saw Josie emerge from the woods and cross the fields in the direction of the house. She cried out with all her strength. “Josie—Josie!”
They called to her again from the car. Down in the valley, Josie stumbled and rose again, still making for the house.
Far away Sadie heard the engine and the sound of their voices as she ran down into the valley.
The voice that called wasn’t Cassie’s voice. With all the strength that was left in her, Josie called her name and wept bitterly when they came at her again.
Call all you like she won’t come. Why should she come when she never did before, no matter what lies you tell yourself. Where was she when you came home from your school? Where was she then Keenan? The door open to the fields and the dishes stinking. She did as she pleased and cared for nothing or no one. Saint Cassie was a lazy bitch and the whole town knew it. She came from a bad crowd, couldn’t be good. That’s you and all belonging to you. Look at you, the cut of you like an auld mangy dog lying in a ditch. How will your precious Cassie explain that to her good friend the Sacred Heart of Jesus, what will she tell Him about her precious daughter lying there half-daft and the track of every tramp in the country left on her? She’ll tell Him you’re not hers, that’s what she’ll tell Him. For you never were Keenan, there never was a day with catkins. There never was a check dress or forget-me-nots. For-get-me-nots my eye, you dreamed it all, you wanted it to be that way didn’t you? What day did you and her ever have? You dreamed it all, every word. The Buyer Keenan beat her all right and beat her he should have for she never made a dinner, out half the day and the house a filthy den, that was your Cassie, left you and him for days while she walked the roads and pleased herself, and what would you expect from a hoor only a hoor. And the Sacred Hearty, He’d look well with the likes of her. He’d have nothing to do with a slut like her. The Buyer and her were well met, wasn’t one but knew it, catch them saying it but they knew it right enough. You’d no mother Keenan, if you had where is she now?
A beam fell in the burning house.
The voice called, Josie Josie. Who was it? It was Cassie calling, Josie Josie do you hear me wee pet, don’t mind their bitter lies they’re jealous always were, they hated us, they hated me for I wouldn’t taint my tongue with lies the like of theirs that’s why they hate you, it’s all bitter lies all of it and don’t let me tell you different. I did all I could for you and him and now I’m here wee Josie, look over here, that day is here again, you remember, the sun and the catkins and the sky blue and never-ending. There’s just you and me now wee Josie just you and Cassie Keenan. I’ve waited all this time.
Cassie smiled, it was the saint smile that Josie knew, the smile it had always been, and Josie saw it all now, their words were lies, all bad lies that faded now as Cassie’s arms outstretched and Josie fell, a child again, back into the warmth of her mother’s body.
The smoke choked her and Cassie’s arms folded about her.
Sadie did not reach her in time. She stood there before the flames trying to scream, her face raw. Then she fainted.
When she awoke she found herself lying on a makeshift bed covered with a coat. Above her a female officer proffered a mug of coffee. Somewhere a typewriter clacked.
‘Where am I—I have to see my kids. Where are my kids?”
A redfaced man in a raincoat grinned. “You’ll see your kids when we’re ready,” he said. “You have a lot of talking to do before you see anyone, you Provo bitch.”
He turned and went out, closing the door loudly behind him. The policewoman smiled.
Sadie took the mug with trembling hands.
XXIV
The news of the shooting of Pat Lacey spread like wildfire. No two versions of the story were the same. The charred shell of the Hamilton house was surrounded by police and military. The workers in the factory listened hungrily as a neighbour of the Hamiltons repeatedly described the sound of the shot, the cries, and the crackling of the flames. The northmen had managed to escape. Benny Dolan had been found wandering blind on the border.
Pat Lacey shot dead.
No one could believe it.
His daughter Una had been taken to hospital suffering from shock. The town was struck dumb. Nobody wanted to raise their voice in case they m
ight somehow be implicated. In the factory the name of Benny Dolan was on everyone’s mind and on nobody’s lips. Maisie Lynch broke the silence by announcing that she had always known there was something about Benny Dolan. “Let’s face it,” she said. “His father was a murderer.” The famous politican returned to the town and spoke bitterly on the television, saying that it was time to take off the kid gloves and root out the vermin, anyone that would hunt an old man and his aged wife out of their house in the dead of night was nothing more than scum. Was this what we had sunk to? he asked, and the people of Carn felt that he was speaking directly to them from the television screen.
Under cover of darkness the Dolan plaque was broken in two. It lay forlorn in the square, the name Dolan smeared with tar. Over a period of two days there was a constant stream of visitors to the Lacey home where everything Benny Dolan had ever said or done was re-evaluated at length. Una Lacey, heavily sedated, stared dead-eyed at the relatives and friends of her father who lowered their eyes and weakly shook her hand. Over cups of tea, football matches long since past were relived, the night the cup had come home to Carn and not a man woman or child had slept a wink, Pat Lacey carried on a victory parade through the streets with the silver trophy held aloft. Coach trips to away matches came alive in the kitchen, then faded away again to a distant time, as if they belonged solely now with the body of Pat Lacey. The members of the Anti-Divorce League had a special wreath made and delivered to the house. The body was taken from the mortuary and brought to the church where Pat Lacey lay beneath the stained glass Sacred Heart with his arms crossed in the padded box, his pinched face fixed with a faint smile, beside him, in an unopened coffin, the body of Josie Keenan.
The double funeral wound its way through the streets. The Pride of Carn Marching Band played behind the hearse as the cortege wound its way towards the cemetery on the hill above the town.
James Cooney, Father Kelly and the National Secretary of the Anti-Divorce League walked silently behind the band. The curtains were discreetly drawn in all the houses. The shops and business premises were shuttered and barred.
The requiem twisted its way through the tiny streets and alleyways of the town, fanning out across the snowcapped fields of the hinterland. The town became an empty shell as they drifted in silence towards the cemetery. The Secretary of the Anti-Divorce League stood by the open grave and struggled with the wind and a flapping piece of notepaper. His words opened out solemnly above the supplicant, despondent heads of the mourners. The country, he said, was under attack from forces that were all the more formidable because they were in many cases, unseen. Great changes had taken place in Carn and in many other small towns throughout the country, almost without us realising it. Once upon a time, in communities such as this one, there was such a thing as the common good. The personal interests of the individual were secondary in the past to what was perceived to be the good of the community as a whole. But now, all that has changed. People are only interested in what society has to offer them. They are not concerned with what they might be able to do for their neighbour, what they might be able to offer the community. We have become a selfish, irresponsible, materialistic society. We are no longer a caring people. The decay has already set in in many areas of life in this country. Already we are seeing the signs of internal collapse that have so visibly affected other countries—broken homes, crime, greed. But there are people in this country, he went on, who had pledged themselves to the continuation of the values our society once held dear. People who believe that these values are worth fighting for, no matter how unfashionable it may seem. Pat Lacey, my dear friends, was such a man. He was not a man who subscribed to the notion of the ME society. He was a man whose selflessness and dedication knew no bounds. He always had time for everyone. He gave his time unthinkingly to many of the organisations in this town, in particular to the football club, Carn Rovers, which he built up almost single-handedly from nothing. He was a man I myself met on many occasions in connection with our work and I never failed to be deeply impressed by his honesty and sincerity. What a pity his life had to be so tragically cut short by a murderer’s bullet. But Pat Lacey would not be the sort of man to bow down before these callous, self-appointed, so-called patriots. He would say to us—let us stand up to them—let us decide what kind of a just society we want—one that does not lust after power and material possessions, that cherishes its children and the family unit above all else—this is the kind of society he wanted . . . and the kind of society, dear friends, that he died for.
The speaker crossed himself and bowed his head. Una Lacey broke down and had to be carried from the graveside. “That bitch’s husband killed my father,” she screamed helplessly. Sadie stood by the cemetery gate and clutched her daughter’s hand tightly to prevent her dropping in a faint. Then the priest began to speak. His voice drifted on the wind down into the streets of the town where Pat Lacey had spent his entire life. A stray dog nosed in the tumbled bins behind the Railway Hotel. The windows of the Turnpike Inn had been blacked out and above the door a sign read CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
The jeweller’s clock stood suspended at three. The broken pump skitted its umbrella of water across the cracked paving slabs. The priest’s words seemed to carry for miles. “I remember the first trophy that Carn Rovers brought home. We lit a fire in the square. There were children dancing. Musicians from the town played jigs and reels. The silver band here played for us all in the square. The captain made his speech. It was Pat Lacey’s big night. The first time Carn Rovers had brought a trophy home in thirty years. And there were many nights like that afterwards. There were many nights like that afterwards for one reason and one reason only—the hard work and dedication of Patrick Lacey. There are not many men like him. There have not been many in the past and there will not be many in the future. It was because of him, and men like him, that this town became great. It was because of him that Carn became the queen of the county. And perhaps it will, if his memory is to mean anything to us, one day become great once more.”
The priest lowered his head and paused for a moment in silence. Then he said, “May he rest in peace.”
The rosary began and the deadening chant filled the cemetery. As Josie Keenan’s coffin was lowered into the clay, a woman looked up from her prayerbook and whispered, “Do you see that man over there? That’s Vincent Culligan. He’s a big building contractor in England now.”
The tall grey-haired man in the tweed suit stared ahead of him, expressionless and oblivious of her comments. James Cooney stood by the cemetery gate with his BMW parked at a discreet distance where it would neither appear ostentatious nor go unnoticed by the mourners. Beside him the politican shifted from foot to foot and rubbed his gloved hands together. A handful of earth tumbled on both coffins and the Pride of Carn Marching Band began to move back towards the town where a number of the old and infirm who had been unable to make the journey to the cemetery stood white-faced on crutches and geriatric walkers in the shadows of hallways and upstairs windows. The requiem seemed to cling to the town for days after, its echoes hanging vaguely in the air, like a thin fog that would not dissipate.
Maisie Lynch led a torchlit procession through the streets at midnight, reading out her Poem for Peace in the square. It was attended by hundreds of people from the neighbouring counties and widely reported in the national newspapers.
There were bitter scenes at the court where Benny Dolan was sentenced to life imprisonment. Sadie was attacked by a number of women when she appeared in the doorway. Her hair was pulled and her face scratched. She was showered with spittle as a policeman helped her into a patrol car. When the workers saw Benny’s photograph in the morning newspaper, they carefully inspected every detail of his face and said to each other, “Look at those eyes. They’re the eyes of a killer. I never liked him. There was always something odd about him.”
He was never spoken of again while the factory remained open.
In the months that followed, when the peo
ple of the town encountered Sadie in the street, waiting with her children for the coach that would take them to the maximum security prison where she would spend an hour with her husband under the cold eye of the warder, they either hurried brusquely past her or made a reluctant, half-heard remark about the weather or the lengthening of the evenings.
In Abbeyville Gardens she rarely received any visitors and any conversations she had through chance, unavoidable meetings with neighbours were confined to stiff, good-mannered exchanges at which their time in the large, anonymous housing estate had made them adept. The construction of a new conservatory or the recent repeat of an American miniseries were consistent safeguards against tense silences that might result from chance meetings with awkward neighbours such as Sadie Dolan. For the people in Abbeyville Gardens, having only come to Carn in recent years and with their roots in other places, the deaths of Pat Lacey and Josie Keenan affected their lives in the same way as would reports on the evening television news of natural disasters and horrific train crashes in distant, irrelevant countries. When their names were mentioned, only the merest flicker of recognition passed across their faces.
Sadie to them was nothing more or less than anyone else. She did not invade their privacy and they did not invade hers. She was the woman with the two children in number thirty-four.
Sadie gave all her time to her children now and whenever the black moods came down around her, she fought them back bitterly, no matter what it took out of her. She did it for Benny and for them. She wrote weekly to her husband to keep up her strength.
Father Kelly called a number of times and told her to put her trust in God. He told her that He never closed a door but He opened a window. Sadie smiled distantly and stared out the window at the neat rows of saplings and the array of pedal cars and toys scattered in the driveways as the priest repeated, “The Good Lord works in mysterious ways.”